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"Last year, I went to Nigeria with Mark Zuckerberg. One of the first stops on the trip was a program that taught kids how to code. When Zuckerberg entered the room, many of the young students had a hard time pulling themselves away from their projects, even to gawk at one of the world's richest men. Facebook's founder instead came to them. "What are you making?" he'd ask. And they would proudly say, "A game!" or whatever it was, and begin showing him how it works. Zuckerberg would stop them. "Show me the code!" he'd say, because, well, he's Zuckerberg, and any occasion is ripe for an ad hoc programming review. And that's when the kid would click on a menu that toggled from the game to the LEGO-like building blocks of a Scratch program. This happened several times, with kids ranging from ages 8 to 15. In every instance, the maker of a cool project could clearly show this famous visitor how he or she had methodically implemented a plan. Zuckerberg was clearly impressed. As we headed up the stairs to leave the building, Zuckerberg called out to me, "Scratch! Have you heard of this?" Oh, yes I had. Though it was not yet released to the world when Zuckerberg left Harvard to launch his quirky little startup, Scratch (developed just a couple of T stops away) is quickly becoming the world's most popular computer language for kids taking their first bite of programming. Last year, over 120 million people came to its site, and many of them built and shared projects, at a rate of a million a month. "It's the gateway drug for Silicon Valley engineering," says Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, a Scratch supporter."

"Objective: Students will engage all of the design and communication skills they have developed by inventing a game that teaches the player something new. Tools/Materials Required: As needed Depth of Knowledge: Extended Thinking Teacher's notes are in purple. For the student's version, see Play to Learn Student Guide."

"s part of the proposed new draft primary curriculum for ICT, there is a significant emphasis on computer science. Below I've included a selection of apps which can be used in both Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. The apps included range from basic skills in coding a Beebot to more advanced skills in coding games and simulations in apps such as Hopscotch and Codea. I've also included some other useful 'ICT' apps, which can be used to develop pupil's typing skills and Spreadsheet skills."

"TWA is happy to release our list of 12 BEST Children's Educational Apps of 2012! Every app featured in this review has been RELEASED in 2012, updates excluded. We wish this list had 12 categories so we could cover all of the wonderful new educational additions to the app store. Since that is not feasible we are limiting this list to learning games only. We will post a list of the 12 Best Book Apps of 2012 soon, as well as a list of the top 12 Educational App Developers!"

"Here are our picks for the 25 best free iPad apps, which span a variety of genres and needs, and include everything from content creation to social media and pure entertainment. We'll be updating this list regularly as developers come up with even more amazing (but free) ways to make the iPad seem absolutely essential in our everyday routines. (And if you're more interested in interactive entertainment, be sure to check out our list of the 25 best iPad games as well.)"

"The pupils use the Scratch tool, developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which gives them them ready-made lines of code that they put together to make games and movies. The aim is that eventually they will begin to adapt the code and eventually write their own. They have been learning coding in their citizenship lessons with teacher Juliet Heppell. She says you don't need to be a computing expert to get children started on the path to becoming confident computer coders. "I am self-taught. I can do some very basic things, but beyond that I just know where to send them to learn more," she says. "

"Leaders in high-performing, high-poverty (HP/HP) schools know that success requires more than just high-quality teaching and learning. The entire school, as a system, should work together to develop a common instructional framework that provides a vision of what success looks like. When a ship loses its compass, getting to port becomes a game of chance. It's no different for a school. When a school, particularly one characterized by high poverty and low performance, lacks an instructional plan or framework, progress will be anything but systematic, and more than likely patterns of low performance will continue. Through the collaborative efforts of the leaders and staff, HP/HP schools focus on three kinds of learning: student, professional, and system. These learning agendas influence each other, and leaders in HP/HP schools make the most of this connection to facilitate sustainable improvements in teaching and learning. Professional learning is the adult learning that takes place within a school, while system learning conveys how the school as a whole learns to be more effective. In other words, as people within the school learn, the system learns."

"To be sure, there have been changes in the Maker movement in the decade-plus since the first Maker Faires wooed a new generation of DIYers. Along the way, we've celebrated successes and asked hard questions. How can we help making become more equitable and inclusive? How can maker ed embrace traditional technology, including computer science? What are the benefits of a maker education, and how do we measure them? In this guide, we hope you'll find answers to-or at least ideas about-these and other questions that explore the meaning of making. We've also included tips and techniques for building and funding your maker program and honing your maker skills. You'll learn how to do a lot with a little, and find inspiration for what's possible-in a school district, college library, even on a bus. For those of you who've never been to a maker event-we've brought one to you. And if you're an experienced maker educator ready to up your game, check out our roster of professional development opportunities. At its core, making is about doing. So we've also made sure you can build something-sitting right where you are. "

"At GeekDad we are big fans of apps that actually use mobile devices in innovative ways to support children's learning. Motion Math Games are one of those developers who have led the way in thinking about how they can design digital learning environments that provide ways for children to learn math with their hands and minds. Their first fraction/decimals app called Motion Math has become one of the benchmarks against which others should be comparing themselves."

"In the past, coding was a pretty niche affair, those of us with our Acorns, Spectrums and Commodore 64s experimenting with lines and lines of code. I remember as an 8 year old, spending ages typing out lines of code on my beige Acorn Electron to draw….a line on the screen. To add insult to injury there was no way to save it unless I wanted to erase my tape of "Ice Ice Baby" and replace it with my code. Needless to say because we were put into the deep end in those days, like millions of others I was put off a bit by coding and just played computer games instead. Fast forward to the iPad era and coding is coming back in a big way. Some very talented developers with a love for coding have produced some spectacular apps, turning the iPad into a coding studio in your hand. There are some great iPad apps which take the pain out of coding for the layman and can teach your children (and you) some excellent skills."

"The BBC's Skillswise website offers lots of good activities for learning and practicing skills in language arts and mathematics. A section of the site that could be useful in a lot of classrooms is the speaking and listening section. The speaking and listening section contains subsections offering lessons and activities to develop a specific skill. Those skills are listening for specifics, communication skills, formal and informal speaking, and giving presentations. Each section has a short introductory video followed by a set of quizzes and interactive games in which students test their skills."

"In today's complicated economic times, many parents and educators are advocating for the importance of instilling financial literacy and wisdom in children early on to prevent fiscal irresponsibility in the future. In response to these sentiments, numerous companies - many of them startups - have started developing mobile apps and games to teach children (and adults) about spending, saving, loans, investments and other aspects of personal finance. Several such apps include:"

"Microsoft has today introduced a new Minecraft Educational portal which has been specifically designed for teachers to be able to use the block building game to help their students learn. The new Minecraft for teachers portal is still currently in the final stages of development but any teachers interested in signing up for updates can do so over on the Education Minecraft website which has been launched by Microsoft this week."

Website has 3 sections: Math Playground - an action-packed site for elementary and middle school students. Practice your math skills, play a logic game and have some fun! Math TV Problem Solving Videos - Each math problems comes with step by step video solution, follow up problems, an online calculator, and sketch pad. Thinking Blocks - interactive math tool developed by classroom teachers to help students learn how to solve multistep word problems.

Food Force 2 has been designed to educate and motivate people to solve world hunger. Since the laptop reaches out to the developing and third-world countries, it educates children and teachers in a village on how to achieve self sustenance in a fun and non-intrusive way. It also provides awareness about the work WFP has been doing for the past many decades to abate the problem of world hunger.

"So the other day I tweeted out this comment, "I am amazed each day to see so much educational progress in my Twitter feed. This should be the norm, not the exception." Many people in education talk a great game when it comes to the effective use of technology, but the results (lack there of) speak for themselves. I constantly see and hear about leaders who tout themselves in a way that makes others develop a perception that they actually know something about the effective integration of a variety of technology tools to improve professional practice. However, once you get past the rhetoric you quickly realize that it is just talk with a clear lack of substance.  This is not to say that they are unwilling to learn or embrace significant change in this area.  It just hasn't happened yet, at least from my view.  Thus, the use of social media in schools by educators continues to be an uphill battle.  "

"Thousands of schools are participating in Hour of Code, a global initiative to get more kids engaged in computer science. Tynker, a creative platform to help children develop programming skills, has launched 10 new coding activities to support the hour of code. Tynker's unique approach motivates students to learn because they can create their own characters, animate them, and rapidly build their own games and interactive stories, using visual block-based programming. The real excitement is best heard in the voices of students who previewed an Hour of Code with Tynker:"